We’re still obsessed with Wallis Simpson

As Madonna’s biopic of Mrs Simpson is released, we explore her enduring
fascination.

What is it about this middle-aged, double divorcee from Baltimore, square-jawed with a mole on her chin and hair scraped back into airplane wings, that suddenly we can’t get enough of? Either she, or an actress impersonating her, has been on almost as many front pages in the last year as she was at the height of her infamy in 1936, the period known as the Abdication Crisis (which perhaps should now be renamed the Abdication Solution, considering how well it all turned out).

Ever since the award-winning film, The King’s Speech, when Wallis had only a brief part – but was, of course, the catalyst for the entire story – there has been an explosion of interest in her: from William Boyd’s bestselling novel, Any Human Heart, recently adapted for television, to Caroline Blackwood’s book, The Last of the Duchess, transformed into a critically acclaimed stage play, and, of course, my own biography, That Woman. Partly based on a new cache of letters from Wallis to second husband Ernest Simpson, it dramatically revises the traditional interpretation of her story – of which more later.

And now, as celebrations begin for the Diamond Jubilee, Madonna’s film about Wallis, W.E., is released. It’s so-called because Wallis and Edward referred to themselves as W.E. – their joint initials, but also a dig at the royal “we”. Subversive, intimate, playful, their nickname reveals much about their relationship.

The film is visually quite stunning, with fabulous costumes and settings, and a brilliantly convincing performance from Andrea Riseborough as Wallis. Madonna and I have both been working on our different interpretations of Wallis for years. One thing we both agree on, and have discussed at length, is that, after three quarters of a century, this woman, demonised for stealing a king, famous merely for her witticisms and style, deserves, at the very least, to be understood.

Yet part of Wallis’s enduring fascination derives from the fact that she has never been understood. She lived at a time when the Royal family did not give interviews to justify their actions. As a result, many women believe that if only they could fathom Wallis’s secret, the secret that enabled her to persuade a king to be so utterly devoted that he would give up everything – throne, empire, family, country, all “for the woman I love”, as he broadcast so poignantly from Windsor Castle – then perhaps they, too, could win their own Prince.

As well as being about the power of a woman, the film is also about an extremely powerful man. Madonna admits she was first drawn to the story when she tried to understand why Edward abandoned power: “Men since the beginning of time have fought to get on the throne. Men are power-seeking animals, so why would this man run away from it?”

Why, indeed. Of course, Wallis had charisma – sex appeal to you and me. When she walked into a room, eyes would turn, and when she talked to a man she was interested in, she would make him feel as if he were the only man in the world. That’s a rare talent. Wallis herself said: “I’m not a beautiful woman… so the only thing I can do is dress better than anyone else.”

Because contemporaries could not pin down the elusive nature of her appeal, they invented wild stories; that she was a witch or sorceress who had learnt bizarre sexual techniques in China.

Her time abroad only deepened her perceived exoticism. Wallis spent what she called her “lotus year” as a single woman in China, after her first marriage to Lt Win Spencer, an alcoholic, had broken down. Since travelling alone in 1924 was considered a shocking way for a woman to behave, her detractors decided that this confirmed Wallis as a woman of loose principles.

The rumour spread that Queen Mary, Edward’s mother, and a disapproving prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, had compiled a “China dossier” detailing her behaviour in brothels and “sing song” houses. Such a dossier has never been found, and probably never existed. However, it is still thought that her deviant ways were the reason Edward could not live without her. But was his dependence really because of the Shanghai Squeeze, the Baltimore Grip or the China Clinch, as it was variously called? Or was it perhaps because Wallis was simply very confident in the bedroom – more than could be said of many well-to-do English “gels” at the time?

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother considered Wallis “the lowest of the low”, yet her family was elite, long-standing in American terms at least. But because her father died when she was just a baby, Wallis was very much the poor relation of the clan and her mother was forced to sell embroidery and take in lodgers. This childhood insecurity burned itself deep in her psyche, later revealing itself in her endless appetite for the jewels and luxuries which Edward showered on her.

The bitterness between Wallis and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother intensified over the years; especially as the latter grew to believe the strain put on her husband when he unexpectedly acceded to the throne contributed to his premature death in 1952. In return, Wallis made caustic remarks about the clothes and hats of the woman she derided as “Shirley Temple Senior”, the Queen herself, according to Wallis, being Shirley Temple.

But emotions have calmed since this bitter feverishness. After the Queen Mother’s death in 2002, official papers were released which shed a more nuanced light on the events of 1936. In addition, although there is still enormous respect for the present Queen and less deference shown to the monarchy in general, we now see the Royal family as ordinary human beings who, like most, have suffered divorce and family break up. We have changed, just as they have.

And so, it’s perhaps no wonder that the relationship of Wallis and Edward is undergoing a period of revision. Our attitudes towards duty, responsibility, pluck and sacrifice – words that dictated everything 80 odd years ago – have changed utterly. Today, we not only understand the pursuit of individual fulfilment, which Edward’s mother, Queen Mary, and her generation condemned so harshly. We believe it is an acceptable life goal. More than that, Britons nowadays are prepared to accept that Edward Vlll, a deeply disturbed adolescent who expressed suicidal death wishes in his twenties, probably recognised his own inadequacies when he abdicated. We even gratefully admit how lucky we are that he did.

In the hours I have spent chatting to Madonna about Wallis, it’s clear she is not only fascinated by the obsessive nature of love and power but also sees herself as Wallis’s defender. “I think I love her,” she says, but quickly adds as I laugh: “Only an American would say they love her, right?”

We both see the need to rehabilitate Wallis – her to defend a fellow American woman whose views have been reduced to a sound bite, me for the sake of historical accuracy. For while the events of 1936 may still be considered a love story, it’s not the romantic love story we thought it was. Edward never forgave himself for the damage he perceived that he had done to Wallis’s character. The worldwide scandal, in his eyes, was a bigger burden for a woman to manage than a man. Extraordinarily, he believed that Wallis had given up more than he had for their relationship. And for this, he allowed her to behave badly to him – indeed, he craved such punishment from her and believed he deserved it.

So, in this Jubilee Year, the allure of Wallis can no longer be seen as elusive; she offered a weak personality a way out of a role for which he was unfit, and, at some deep level, knew he was. Their complex relationship enabled and facilitated Edward in punishing himself for what he always knew was a dereliction of duty. Wallis was more hunted than hunter.